October 2, 2007: Chinese espionage in the United States was recently revealed to be more ambitious than previously thought. This came about with the prosecution of a Chinese engineer (Yuefei Ge) and a Chinese American one (Lan Lee), who had stolen military laser and communications technology, and then sought backing from a company owned by the Chinese military, to finance the development of military equipment, based on the stolen technology. The two are being tried for economic espionage, based on the 1996 Economic Espionage Act. Only three people have been convicted of economic espionage, as defined by this Act, so far.

What was clever about Ge and Lee was that they were not stealing technology for a foreign power, but for the purpose of developing militarily useful applications of the technology. These items would then be sold to China, particularly if the Chinese came through with the research and development money. China has thus mobilized the power of venture capital to encourage their spies.